About Us

The contributors to the Consumer Law & Policy blog are lawyers and law professors who
practice, teach, or write about consumer law and policy. The blog is hosted by Public
Citizen's Consumer Justice Project, but the views expressed here are solely those of the individual contributors (and don't necessarily
reflect the views of institutions with which they are affiliated). To view the blog's policies, please click here.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Videos Educate Consumers Being Sued for Debt Collection

by Jeff Sovern

Here. The New Media Advocacy Project (N-Map) and Fordham Law School’s Feerick Center for Social Justice in conjunction with MFY Legal Services, Inc., and Pro Bono Net, along with other organizations, have created a series of short, animated videos to help consumers being sued in debt collection cases. I watched a couple of them and they are quite well done. Consumers go to the web site and answer a series of questions (called a survey on the web site) about whether they have heard from a debt collector, are being sued, have had a judgment entered against them, etc. On the basis of their answers, the web site then identifies which videos to show them. It is easy to imagine that consumers who don't know what to do when they are being sued by debt collectors will find these useful. It will be interesting to see the extent to which consumers use them. While the videos are directed to New York consumers, they would probably be valuable to non-New York consumers and in any event seem worth emulating elsewhere. (HT: Carolyn E. Coffey)